The title of Nick Hill’s new collection, “And We’d Understand Crows Laughing,” is a little cryptic and invites a question: What does one have to do to gain the ability to understand crows laughing? The title of the first section of the book, “Belongings,” made me wonder: Do we need to own or carry some thing or things in order to understand? The title of the first poem, “Skip The World,” seemed counterintuitive and begged yet another question: Skip the world and what, skip life?But then I read the poem and began to catch on:

Tell yourself to value the notion of stone over water,

and whisper, Pick it up, and then just let it go.

Heft with the right, warm the arm.

Take bearings, estimate the curvature.

Feel the hand come around behind the ear, coiling,

releasing torque at the elbow,

snapping forward until it is

gone, its skipping course for a moment seen.

Throw into the waves

what you have endured.

Try to be the same each time,

hold fast against the zephyrs.

Throw hard into the angry waves

shoving forward with their burly shoulders.

The brute stone turns belly up and sinks,

its own dumb marker.

The dream, of course,

to skip it right out of this world.

Hill suggests we engage with the natural world wholeheartedly but with a touch of calculation in order to be fully of the world, to belong to it in an elemental way. Value possibility, the triumph of stone over wave and wind. Value perseverance; learn from what you have endured. Rely on steadfastness; believe in dreams. But the assumption of the last couplet leavesa feeling of unease, a foreboding. A few pages later is the poem “Ars Peonensis,” with sensual, vivid images of a personified peony: “In March she was a honeyed knob, / an ant laden pincushion of promises, / a veined lollipop on a springy stick. / And then with cumulus in the blue / one afternoon she opened like a greeting, / a near chaos of tissues / bounded by a breath held and then released / soft as a chime . . . //To keep her I cut her down, too late / to take back my error, once again.” Funny and a little heartbreaking. The narrator ends up with the wilted bloom in a compost heap, then fashions a simulacrum from paper and muses on “sapient cleverness // (monuments, tall ships, splitting atoms) . . . [how] compost // will need to teach me and guide me // . . . [to] watch the dark knife // of hubris become a shard // in the loam with the worms.” Fair warning to all stone-skippers! Late in this section is the very moving poem “Shakkei Memorial” about planting a cypress to “reverberate evergreen beside that massive sno-cone,” Mt. Baker, which lies in the distant background. Hill notes that “Shakkei is a Japanese term for a borrowed landscape in which a planting is located such that it participates in the distant view of a great feature of the landscape.” One need not know this to feel the deep reverence in the poem: “I don’t often address a tree so personally, / … I have noticed our kinship many times before, arms out / stretched, reaching, feet near clay, / eyes harder to discern, soul everywhere from bark to cone.” I found the first stanza to be too informational: “This time the deadline happens to be the first real winter storm / blowing south from Puget Sound sideways across the bay, / not some academic thing” and it detracted from the poem’s distilled beauty. But the first line of the second stanza, “And you bare in your root ball, cypress” really draws in the reader.

The second section, entitled “The Tides” is one long poem: the musings of one lover as the other comes and goes with regularity. Time, present time, when the lover is near, casts a kind of spell on the speaker, rendering him unable to capture the whole of the lover as he might like to. In the flesh, the lover can only be taken in in pieces: “It’s now that you seem most absent, ethereal, a fluttering / at the seed bin . . . a hand that must / be yours and I think I see you flaring there at close / range—though maybe I’m mistaken—the moments / passing through tinged eyebrows, then droopy / doubts . . but / where are you?” And further on “Sometimes the closer I get to you // The more you come apart, the sharp // Touch of a foot with toes, cold / And discrete.” It is a compelling theme, and Hill delves deeply to explicate it, but at ten pages it gets bogged down and hits too many off-notes: “If I held your skeleton any closer / you’d be me.” Or this: “Promised time fashioned itself into a mechanical bird.” The poem runs to the sentimental and risks cliche: “When you lie in bed together after twenty years / And you can still think to say, “That was super, sweetie.” Also, the poem is not served by the title “I Miss You Already,” which is then repeated as the first line to little effect. The section title, “The Tides,” is more apt and less telling, although the tidal imagery dries up. The reader feels buffeted about as the narrator swings between imaginings, past scenarios, and the present state of affairs with and without the lover.

The third section, entitled “Red Truck,” is an exploration of a landscape, a ruin of a truck, and someone referred to as “Somebody” who used and then abandoned the truck among the bramble. “Somebody” is Hill’s “Everyman,” whom the speaker in the poems sometimes refers to as simply “S” to imply a real but hidden person and to underscore that he/she is any one of us: you or me or a “ veteran of many wars, [a]street poet,” even the narrator himself. In the poem “Humanism Unveiled,” the speaker concludes the poem with the line, “But who is S. if not all of us between deeds and dreaming?” In the first poem “Red Truck,” the truck is referred to without an article to create a sense of persona, its first stanza – right justified – is quoted here in its entirety for its affinity to a certain wheel barrow:

sun

rise on

red truck,

rooster

on a

plastic

bucket

Red truck is “…A one-ton ruin / That built the world as we know it / Remains of illusion // Not a pyramid or Xanadu / Not a poster for Communists or Capitalists / Not a glossy pin-up calendar // No landmark though it signifies / Rusting stolid, pistons seized … Satellite pictures a hunk of metal / Cousin to space debris / that falls in flaming chunks / bringing down / petite gods dreaming / from deep in heaven.” Red truck stands for America and for Americans, in fact for all of humanity, for dreams, for pursuit, for what we leave behind, for unintended consequences. In the poem “The Other,” the speaker pushes the concept of “Somebody” to a farcical conclusion, becoming “Nobody” as in “Nobody is somebody you could get into, like a part in a play. / Nobody lives here would be something like beachfront / property on a remote island. / Some of my best friends are nobodies. / We attend the yearly convention where everyone stands / around at the cocktail party looking at each other’s blank / name tags.” Somebody, everybody, nobody: who takes responsibility? In the poem “Blackberries In The Cold,” the epigraph “Come back to me is my request” brings to mind the primal fear of a parent sending a child off to war. In it, red truck seems a companion to the speaker: “Walking the trail beside red truck the blackberries taunt / from thorned labyrinths… In another season they will have covered your shape / completely in a barbed bower. / Their sweet tart taste but a harbinger of the grip of spines / about the heart, when we heard the names not coming / home.” Fitting, wrenching, and beautiful language.

Each section of Nick Hill’s collection is distinct in voice and tone. Intimate and awe-struck when engaging with the natural world in the first section, searching and self-reflective in the second, and social-political and authoritative in the third. Each replete with natural touchstones: soapberry, sedum and creeks; humus, tidelands, and volcanoes; salmon, salmonberry, and chickweed to name a few; and with off-beat places like Red Dog Farm, Cry Baby Hill, and Kah Tai lagoon. Hill uses Portuguese, Spanish, and a little French in some of these long-lined poems.He is emeritus professor of Spanish and Latin American Literature at Fairfield University, and from the tender poem “Dona Alice’s Baked Apple,” about a mother and her recipe, one can surmise that he lived in Brazil as a child. I took my time reading this collection; it is dense and could have benefited from some pruning. But Nick Hill’s collection is intelligent, heart-felt, and varied in the best sense of the word. Poems such as “Thistles On Goleta Highlands,” “Water Tapestry,” and “Whale Creek, Near Queets” are engaging, lush lyrics. And as for crows laughing, it’s all in the poem “Seed,” which you will have to read, maybe while carrying one in your pocket “for guidance.”

Thursday, September 06, 2012

In a 2011 interview, David Hoenigman, described John Bennett
in this way: “. . .John Bennett has always stood up for what's right and wrong
in us, this country, the world. Big heart. Loud voice. Immense mission—to get
it all down. For you to see what he sees. Like it or not. Think about it.” In “Contact is How We Know We’re alive”
Bennett punches it home. And though “War
All the Time” (part of a trilogy that includes “The Theory of Creation and “The
Birth of Road Rage”) is copyrighted 2005, the words ring as true today:

Rugby, football and war. Freeway carnage,

beaten wives, drunk drivers. Elementary –

school shootouts, industry gone
berserk in the

Congo – contact is how we know
we’re alive.

Peace is for pansies. Give us drill teams and frat

houses. Sumo wrestlers, drive-bys and Mike

Tyson. Bite the ears off of Jesus, cop a plea. Talk

shows where we give vent to our
grievance.

The face in the mirror turns its
back. We

shatter into a lifetime of bad
luck.

Yeah. “The truth,” Bennett says in “Drugs &
Wars,” “claws at our backs like a woman in the throes of a climax” and then,
“Historians dip their quills into blood” (“Flat-Line Reptilian Brains”).

You get the point, Bennett doesn’t
wrap the ugly up in a bow.

Throughout the work he alludes to
great writers, texts and individuals and each time the allusions jump from the
page and grab you in the intellect, ask you to consider or re-consider the
original thoughts. For example, “Every
child is Moses in a basket made of reeds that we bulldoze to make room for
urban sprawl.”

He ends a work entitled “Pax
Americana” with:

Are we having fun yet? Good.
Now raise that

flag and snap to. Mass graves full of children.

Tall buildings in rubble. Genocide with a smiley

face. You get the picture.

Myths to live by.

The hero’s journey.

It’s likely that Joseph Campbell
did not have the above in mind when he told us to “follow your bliss.”

Two last thoughts, read the book
for the rest:

On a 10:00 am Sunday morning,
church bells ring

whole families out into their
cars, and just

outside the atmosphere, a huge bat
circles the

earth, casting a shadow that
covers whole

continents. We call it stormy weather and

build solariums in the rain. Giant buildings

come crashing down. . .

And we do not wish to pay
attention, grasp the dire situation for ourselves, then for the children:

Our town. Two kids sitting on a ledge, a boy

and a girl with white holes for
eyes, untouched

by anything, kicking their feet in
a world where

the clocks have stopped ticking,
dreaming the

impossible dream, waiting for good
things to

happen.

*****Rene Schwiesow is a
poet/writer/reviewer/editor and co-host of the wildly popular South Shore
venue, The Art of Words, in Plymouth, MA.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

“The Theory of Creation” is part of a trilogy.The other two books are “War All the Time”
and “The Birth of Road Rage.”In the
forward, Bennett tells us: “The shards in ‘The Theory of Creation’ were written
over a span of time ranging from the mid 1990’s until late in 2004.”As you read the shards you may find that some
appear to be written after 9/11.In
fact, Bennett says they were written years earlier.His explanation:“. . .if you’ve got your finger on the pulse,
you can hear the beating heart of the future.”

A crowded bus making its way through Manhattan.

People packed into seats and standing up

jammed together.No
one speaks. Everyone’s

eyes are the same.There is a faint knowing, an

even fainter surprise.They’re detached from

illusion until it’s their turn to get off.There’s

nothing to act on.

This may sound devoid of hope and while Bennett also offers
us end lines such as:“Dry-sperm floats
thru the air like cottonwood in a postpartum world,” we are not left hopeless:

Expectation is the readiness to burst into light

in a pitch-black existence.

In “The Business of Luck” all hope seems at an end and yet,
from my personal perspective the end three lines of the work remind me of the
final scene in “The Grapes of Wrath.”Rose of Sharon is devoid of hope after the stillborn birth of her child,
yet is able to provide sustenance to a starving man on the floor of a boxcar by
offering him the milk of her breasts.

You arrived on the scene rolling snake eyes.

You’ve been huddled in boxcars forever.

You’ve gone tits up in the business of luck.

And still, perhaps we are able to offer something of value,
to offer hope to someone, somewhere.

In a shard entitled “Plain Speak” Bennett says: “Something
much worse has transpired than what Orwell (in “1984”) foresaw.”Yet, the juxtaposition between despair and
hope that he has kept going throughout the book ends with an awe-inspiring hopeful
moment:

Overhead a hawk is gliding on the wind against

a clear sky.I switch
off NPR and silence swoops

down over us like the hand of God.James slides

his earphones down around his neck and leans

over the front seat to look out the windshield

at the hawk, and for an instant, in that silence,

we all three know exactly where it is that we

came from.

Life is a paradox.

Rene Schwiesow is a poet/writer/editor/reviewer and co-host
of the wildly popular South Shore venue The Art of Words in Plymouth, MA.

Monday, September 03, 2012

Elizabeth Searle: A Writer Fascinated With the Dark Side of
American Culture.

By Doug Holder

Writer Elizabeth
Searle talks with a rapid-fire cadence, has an engaging laugh, and an
optimistic sparkle to her eyes. But beneath this lies a writer who is
interested in the darker side of American culture-the side obsessed with
competition and winning at all costs. According to her website she is :

“ …the author of two
works of theater and four books of fiction: CELEBRITIES IN DISGRACE, a
novella and stories; A FOUR-SIDED BED, a novel nominated for an American
Library Association Book Award and MY BODY TO YOU, a story collection
that won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize and a 2011 novel, GIRL HELD IN HOME.
The New York Times Book Review called her novella Celebrities in Disgrace “a
miniature masterpiece.” Elizabeth Searle's and Michael Teoli's Rock Opera, TONYA
& NANCY THE ROCK OPERA-- as well as her and Abigail Al-Doory Cross’
original opera, TONYA AND NANCY: THE OPERA-- have drawn worldwide media
attention. Searle’s short stories have appeared in magazines such as PLOUGHSHARES,
REDBOOK, NEW ENGLAND REVIEWAGNI, and KENYON REVIEW
and in anthologies such as LOVERS and DON'T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME.
Elizabeth has taught fiction writing at Brown, Emerson College, Bennington MFA,
Stonecoast MFA, and the University of Massachusetts (Visiting Writer, 2007-08).
She served for over a decade on the Executive Board of PEN/New England and
founded the Erotic PEN readings. She teaches at Stonecoast MFA…”

I talked with Searle
on my Somerville Community Access TV show:Poet to Poet: Writer to Writer.

Doug Holder:You are
a novelist, and playwright. Which do you identify with the most?

Elizabeth Searle: I like to jump. I am a hyper sort of
person. For years I would have said fiction right away. But theatre has always
been an interest of mine. And I have spent a great deal of time on the Tonya and Nancy opera. It is a show
based on the famous knee attack on Nancy Kerrigan that Tonya Harding was
suspected of being behind. It is one of the top rated sports events of all
time. It is a scandal that I followed breathlessly. To me it has so many themes
of America. It is an Only in America
story. We created it as a sort of black comedy. We produced it both as a rock opera and an opera. Both
productions seemed to get a lot of media, and we have gotten good reviews too. The Boston Herald gave us a very good
notice, and a lot of good media outlets like The Boston Globe covered us.

DH: How did you get the idea for this opera?

ES: My niece was studying at Tufts University. And she
wanted to do a short opera as her final project. She asked me for help in
coming up with an idea. And I came up with this idea partly because I have
written about Tonya and Nancy in my novel Celebrities
in Disgrace. So when I thought of an opera—I thought that their story has
all the emotions—the whole range. We had greatly talented and professional
people involved with this. It was presented at the Zero Arrow Theatre in Harvard Square—a theatre associated with
the American Repertory Theatre. So
now I relate to a lot of theatre writing. Now-this may not make the Met, but,
hey, there are a lot of strange operas out there by Philip Glass, John Adams,
etc… Recently some people invited me to the Tony
Award ceremonies—which was thrilling—so who knows?

ES: I think it is a great job to have as a writer. You can’t
beat the hours. Yes, it is a lot of work, a lot of reading. But luckily I have
taught at programs where the students are talented so I can enjoy the reading
of their work. Stonecoast where I
have taught for 10 years is great in this way because we get students of all
backgrounds, ages, and they are talented. Sure it takes a lot of creative
energy to teach, but the hours are such that I can be with my husband and
children.

DH: You studied at Brown University—any mentors that you can
mention?

ES: John Hawkes—the great American writer. I was in a small
class with just five people—so it was memorable experience. I also was
influenced by Robert Coover. I did my undergraduate time at Oberlin College. Field Magazine was situated there and it
was a great time to be a creative writing major. This was a time when a lot of
programs didn’t have a presence like that.

DH: I know back in the day you were in writing groups with
writers like Debra Spark, and Jessica Treadway. Both are writers that I have
interviewed. How important were for you? Are they still?

ES: My writing groups are still important to me. In my heyday
of writing groups I had two great girl groups that included Debra and Jessica.
I am involved with a writers’ group that has two members from the program at
Brown University when I attended.

DH: You were the Vice-Chair of PEN NEW ENGLAND for a while. What
was your role there?

ES: I was on the Executive Board for10 years. I was also secretary and I helped
run the children’s program they had. We had a book fair at the Boston Medical
Center—and we gave free books out to the public. We had this event where we sat
at a typewriter and would type up things kids would dictate to us—and then make
them into books.

DH: You often write about ambitious women that are preoccupied
with fame and hunger for attention. Is this in anyway like you?

ES: Oh sure. I am a very practical person. So I realize fame
is a very rare thing in the literary world. I am an ambitious writer—I mean I
published four books. In my own life I wouldn’t act out in the ways my
characters do. However those dark emotions are very American, and I am
fascinated with them.

DH: How are these dark undercurrents American?

ES: Our culture is obsessed with winning and competition. I
think in a way it runs the American engine, but in another way it is out of
control. There is a yin and yang-a good and bad.

Cape Cod Writers Conference August 6 to 9, 2015

( Click on picture for more info) "Enjoy summer on the Cape while improving your writing skills! Attend the 53rd Cape Cod Writers Center Conference, August 6-9 at the Resort and Conference Center at Hyannis. Register for one day or the entire weekend. Choose from thirty classes and workshops with distinguished authors, editors, agents, mentors, and media experts, including keynote speakers Marge Piercy and Claire Cook. To register click on http://bit.ly/1AxusHv. For more information call (508) 420-0200 or write to writers@capecodwriterscenter.org.

Portrait of an Artist as a Young Poseur : 1974 to 1983 by Doug Holder

(To order click on picture) “Doug Holder is a poet of the old city, the city of our fathers, of the 1950s and later. Mr. Holder writes poems like notes in a diary. I found myself struck by their economy, wit, and urban melancholy... He has a voice unlike that of any of his contemporaries. Holder is a poet of the street and coffeehouses, an observer of the everyday. He writes of old Marxists, security guards and his relationship to his deceased father—themes of the common life. I am drawn to these poems as I am to the poetry of Philip Levine and the prose of James T. Farrell. But Holder’s poetry is deeper than that. He sees the world not for what it is, but on his own terms. He is living in the poem rather than in poetry.” ~ Sam Cornish, First Boston Poet Laureate

Portrait of An Artist as a Young Poseur by Doug Holder (Order on paypal.com)

Midway Journal Poetry Contest!

(Click on pic for more details!) Step right up! Midway Journal is accepting submissions now through May 31 for the "Monstrosities of the Midway" literary contest. Entry fee is $15. Grand prize is $1,000 and publication in Midway Journal. Dorianne Laux will judge. For complete contest details, please visit www.midwayjournal.com/contest

OH Don't ,She Said..a poem/song project

( Preview and Purchase--click on pic) Oh Don’t, She Said ~ by Jennifer Matthews. Jennifer wrote this song after her friend and notable poet, Doug Holder, showed her his poem: “Oh don’t, she said, it’s cold.” After reading it, Jennifer felt inspired and heard a song in it. She had to change some of the words to make it work lyrically with the music, but she made sure to stay close to the original poem as much as possible. Jennifer played all the instruments on it and engineered it. It was mixed by Phil Greene at Normandy Sound, who worked with the likes of Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen and many, many other noted artists. Doug wrote it after a conversation he had with his mother while riding on a train to New York City. It is dedicated to her, Rita Holder. Genre: Rock: Acoustic Release Date: 2014

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So Spoke Penelope by Tino Villanueva

(Click on picture to order now!) "An intense poetic hovering over a situation of prolonged expectation....The poems in SO SPOKE PENELOPE are simply amazing, whether in the form of an apostrophe to the absent Odysseus or to the Gods, whether in a narrative past-tense mode or in the immediacy of the lived present, whether in the staccato of monosyllables or in the exuberance of unusual compounds, whether they employ Greek-feeling pentameter lines, alliteration, or anaphora. This poetic cycle shows that the whole range of human experience is contained in Penelope of Ithaca."—Werner Sollors

Visitors from around the country and world...( Click on real time view for complete list)

New From Muddy River Books: Eating Grief at 3AM" by Doug Holder

(To order click on picture) “There is a sad, sweet nostalgia in Holder’s Eating Grief at 3 AM, a sense of loss and sadness for the places and the people who were a part of those scenes: the hunchback, the Tennessee Williams’ half lost blondes, the turbaned men and the discarded move nostalgically through life. Yet Holder finds something almost like beauty or knowledge in the abandoned warehouses with weeds crawling to the roof. He imagines when Mrs. Plant, an old art teacher, was an enigmatic young woman ‘feverishly taking notes about the paintings, a love note stuffed in a pocket of her winter coat.’ There are always dreams, even if never fulfilled. There is so often the sense of time passing, of letting go-- letting go of people, letting go of Harvard Square Theater and the Wursthaus, balms that seemed like they would always be there. And they are and always will be in Holder’s moving poems.” — Lyn Lifshin, Author of Cold Comfort (Black Sparrow Press) "

Visitors from around the country and world...

Elizabeth Lund Interviews Doug Holder-Founder of the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

(Click on picture for interview)

With Robert Lowell and his Circle by Kathleen Spivack

(Click on image to order the book) "Please join us for the book launch, Sunday , December 2, 2012--4 to 6 P.M. Co-sponsored by UPNE, the Harvard Bookstore & the Grolier Poetry Bookshop, Cambridge, MA. Short presentation, lots of refreshments. In 1959, Kathleen Spivack won a fellowship to study at Boston University with Robert Lowell. Her fellow students were Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, among others. The book looks at the work of poetry, as well as lifelong friendships, despair, addiction, perseverance and survival, and at how social changes altered lives and circumstances. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, this memoir illuminates the lives and thoughts of some of the most influential artists of the twentieth century."

Please donate to the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene- keep us alive!

(Click on Picture to order) "Starting with Allen Ginsberg and ending with Charlie Parker, Sam Cornish takes us on a whirlwind tour of some of the livelier segments of 1950s and early ’60s American culture. With non-stop energy, syncopated rhythms, and a fast pace that keeps you humming as you turn the pages, Cornish visits a wide array of writers, musicians, and films, stopping along the way to visit local poetry scenes and pay tribute to the homeless and poor. Calling on Jack Kerouac, Langston Hughes, Marlon Brando, Miles Davis and a host of others, Cornish makes us feel the excitement of those times, even as he and his companions absorb the complex and often disturbing history of what he aptly calls “My Young America.” — Martha Collins

Advertise with us! ( Read what people are saying about the Blog) ibbetsonpress@msn.com

click on pic for more info..... Rusty Barnes ( Night Train magazine) "Doug. I know your reviewers have made a difference to me and my work. Keep up the good work". J.L. Morin ( Lecturer at Boston University/ Library Review) "That's a lovely blog you've got there, Doug Holder." ( Sherill Tippins--"Inside the Dream Palace: The Life and Times of New York's Legendary Chelsea Hotel.") " I love your introduction, and fervently hope that Somerville never meets anything like the Chelsea Hotel's fate. It's always a pleasure to read your blog -- even when I'm not in it!" Alan Kaufman ( Editor of the "Outlaw Bible of American Literature")-- " ...a terrific blog..." Perry Glasser--( Winner of the Gival Press Novel Award): " The blog is very impressive." Elizabeth Swados ( Tony Nominated Playwright, Guggenheim Award Winner ): "Thanks you so much for this review on your blog. It helps so much, not just in terms of getting people to know that it exists, but also makes me feel that someone has gotten what I have tried to do. I wish you the very best." Marguerite G. Bouvard, PhD-- Resident Scholar Women's Research Center-Brandeis University: " I love reading your blog. What a refreshing respite from the New York Times. Thanks for all you do for poetry." Ed Hamilton--author of "Legends of the Chelsea Hotel" commenting on Chelsea Hotel article: " That's a great piece. Thanks for sending the link along." Richard Moore-- Finalist/T.S.Eliot Prize " I have just read your wonderful interview of the wonderful Eric Greinke!" Steven Ford Brown (Former Director of Research for the George Plimpton Interview Series "The Writer in America"): " You did a great job with the Clayton Eshleman interview, especially the personal stuff. So much better than doing the dry talk about literary polemics." Celia Gilbert (Pushcart Prize in Poetry) "Doug thanks so much for that fine shout out. I'm delighted how you put it all together!" Karen Alkalay-Gut, PhD ( Professor of English-Tel Aviv University) "Doug, I enjoy your posts immensely" Lise Haines ( Writer-in-Residence, Emerson College-Boston) "I love your blog!" "( Elizabeth Searle- Executive Board/Pen New England) : "Like your blog. I like the interview with Rick Moody." Ploughshares Staff- " Everyone at Ploughshares is a big fan of your blog." Suzanne Wise (Publicity Director Poets House-NYC): "Thank you so much for this wonderfully thoughtful portrait of our new home! You really "get us" and you translate that understanding vividly. I love the way you talk about Stanley's ( Kunitz) giant dictionary as a relic from another age. We're glad to preserve such relics." Kathleen Bitetti ( Chief Curator Medicine Wheel Productions/ Former Director of the Artists Foundation--Boston.) " Love your interview with Marc Zegans...wonderful blog!"

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Ibbetson Street is now in a partnership with Endicott College!

(Click on to go to the Endicott College Website)Ibbetson will be supported in part and formally affiliated with Endicott College.

The Arts and Literature in Somerville, Mass.: Off the Shelf with Doug Holder

( Click on picture to go to column) A weekly column in The Somerville News--Somerville's only independent newspaper!

The Somerville News Writers Festival Nov. 13, 2010

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ISCS PRESS--WE WILL PUBLISH YOUR BOOK!

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The Boston Globe: Poetic Healing at McLean Hospital

This was the lead article in the Living/Arts section of the Boston Globe. (Feb. 2000) It has to do with Doug Holder's poetry workshops at McLean Hospital and the history of this literary landmark. (Click on pic for full article)

(Click on picture to view) A Production of Somerville Community Access TV's show " Poet to Poet : Writer to Writer." Moderator: Gloria Mindock, Producer: Doug Holder, Director: Bill Barrell

"The Paris of New England" Interviews with Poets and Writers" by Doug Holder

( Click on pic to order this and other Ibbetson Press titles) Interviews with poets and writers from the Paris of New England Somerville, Mass. " Thank you for your interview book. I read it straight through last night and enjoyed it very much...So many good ideas in one book." Eric Greinke-- Presa Press "Very engrossing collection of Holder's interviews, with a wide range of writers about their lives and work. Included are Mike Basinski, Mark Doty, Robert Creeley, Ed Sanders, Hugh Fox, Robert K. Johnson, and Pagan Kennedy.-- Chiron Review

Advertise with a popular online and print literary column in the heart of the Paris of New England

Reach a wide swath of the Boston Area literary community through The Somerville News' "Off the Shelf" literary Column with Doug Holder. The column is online and in a weekly print edition that reaches 15,000 readers. For more information click on picture.

Grolier Poetry Book Shop

" Poetry is honored every day at the Grolier Poetry Book Shop in Harvard Square, the oldest continuous poetry book shop in the United States. We stock over 15,000 volumes and spoken word CD's. Special orders are welcome. Come and visit us at 6 Plympton St. or online http://grolierpoetrybookshop.org (click on picture)

YOUR AD CAN BE HERE ( Click on pic for more info)

Doug Holder/ Founder/ Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene: Advertise with a popular Boston Area Literary Site--For Low rates-- Contact: dougholder@post.harvard.edu 617-628-2313

Poetry Workshops With Doug Holder

( Click on Picture for Doug Holder's website) Doug Holder has led poetry workshops, both for indviduals and groups for a decade now. Robert Olen Butler ( Pulitzer Prize Winner for Literature) wrote of Holder's work: " I've been greatly enjoying your poems. You have a major league talent, man." Available for individual or groups. Expert in gently helping the novice into poetry and the poetry scene. Reasonable Rates. Available for editing. Call 617-628-2313 for more information. Or email: dougholder@post.harvard.edu

Ibbetson Street Press

No One Dies at the Au Bon Pain by Doug Holder

Poems of Boston and Just Beyond: From The Back Bay to the Back Ward by Doug Holder

A poetry collection that deals with Boston, and Holder's experiences working on the psychiatric units at McLean Hospital

Of All the Meals I Had Before by Doug Holder

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The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel (To order click on picture)

A new poetry book by Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene Founder, Doug Holder. "I'm enjoying 'The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel' -- perfect poems, especially in that ambiance." Dan Tobin -- Director of Creative Writing--Emerson College-Boston, Mass./ " It is quintessential Holder& bristles with sardonic wit. Congratulations."-- Eric Grienke (founder of Presa Press) / " I finished "The Man in the Booth in the Midtown Tunnel'...greatly enjoyed the menagerie of characters and imperfect human beings I met along the way. Excellent work Doug!"-- Paul Steve Stone ( Creative Director W.B.Mason and the autthor of "Or So It Seems.") / "I am reminded in the pages of this collection of meeting, a year or two before her death, the artist Alice Neel, who painted gorgeously surreal ironic portraits of famous and ordinary people in the 1930's and 40's--and shivering as she looked me over. Doug Holder looks at the world through a similarly sharp and amused set of eyes...Rich nuggets of humor and wry reflection throughout this collection." Pamela Annas ( Asst. Dean of Humanities U/Mass Boston/Reviewer Midwest Book Review) “....particularly liked The Tunnel—a little masterpiece!” Kathleen Spivack ( Permanent Visiting Professor of Creative Writing/American Literature at the University of Paris) "I want to tell you this was just about the best chap I ever read, I absolutely DEVORED it..."--( Robin Stratton--Boston Literary Magazine) "An acclaimed Boston-area poet writes about characters who have captured his interest over the years -- a colonial dame with purple hair, a postal worker ready to be returned to his sender, J. Edgar Hoover's secret love -- in this skillfull collection of short, free form poems." (Perkins School of the Blind Website) Click on picture to access Cervena Barva Press

About Me

Doug Holder is the founder of the independent literary press Ibbetson Street. He teaches writing at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston and Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. He is the arts/editor of The Somerville News, and for the past twenty years has run poetry groups at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. His poetry and prose have appeared in the Bay State Banner, The Boston Globe, The Boston Globe Magazine, Rattle, Endicott Review, Long Island Quarterly, Toronto Quarterly and many others. He holds an M.A. in Literature from Harvard University.

Poems From The Left Bank: Somerville, Mass. by Doug Holder

( Click on picture to order) "The poems are full of life, witty and sympathetic and sharp all at once. And most of all, full of an engaged affection for the place and people. If Burns is Scotland's Bard, you are certainly Somerville's..." Kate Chadbourne, PhD ( Lecturer-Harvard University-Celtic Languages and Literature)

From The Paris of New England: Interviews with Poets and Writers" by Doug Holder

(Click on picture to order) Interviews by Doug Holder from the Paris of New England: Somerville, Mass. "I am impressed. A lot of great interviews compiled over the years."-- Brian Morrisey--Poesy Magazine / " A very engrossing read..."--Chiron Review / "Doug Holder knows how to ask important questions"--New Pages

Advertise with the Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene.

Doug Holder founder says: "Reach a wide audience of poets, writers, editors and publishers, Have your ad linked to your site. The Boston area Small Press and Poetry Scene is well known in the small press community..." For information about rates, etc...email: dougholder@post.harvard.edu or call 617-628-2313